PMG Public Relations

Edit Facebook Links With Ease

Posted on 01. May, 2012 by Nicole Ravlin

Who knew? As I was updating PMG’s Facebook page today, I realized that you can now edit the headline and the description that appears when you post a link to your wall. Apparently you could do this as of last year – but somehow I have overlooked this feature.

By clicking on the title of the link, you can easily edit:

The same is true for the body:

The only caveat is that you need to edit BEFORE you post the link. Once you press “post”, the link can not be edited.

On broadcasting thoughts…

Posted on 03. Oct, 2011 by Nicole Ravlin

 ”No thought has much reason unless it’s written or spoken.”  – Harry Reasoner, Newsman

Perhaps if Mr. Reasoner were to say this statement today, he may add “tweeted, or Facebooked.”

With SO many channels to choose from, how do you select where to publish or broadcast your thoughts?

Will You Be My Friend?

Posted on 28. Jun, 2011 by Nicole Ravlin

I’m stuck not knowing what to do, here. On an almost daily basis I am getting friend requests from people I have not met before – or, at least I don’t think I have. You see, I do a lot of public speaking, guest lectures at colleges, and attend many networking events. I blog, tweet, and publish my writing whenever I can. So, one might say I am a pretty public person. Though I would not consider myself a “public figure”.

Here’s the issue: with all of these new found “friends”, who I will enjoy getting to know and network with, how do I manage my privacy? I have a family and friends who I share information with about life, post pictures, etc. that I do not necessarily want to share with the general public.

At first, I was managing this well. I only used Facebook for actual friends and drove all professional contacts to LinkedIn. Then I started confirming friend requests of associates, clients and people I met at trade shows and events. I created groups and went through and tagged each person (a tedious task), and then set permissions. This worked… for awhile. I found that this could be a cumbersome process and made me evaluate each and every person. I had (or still have) too many categories or buckets to qualify people into and they are starting to become too mixed.

Some people manage their social media connections with the “accept everyone” mentality. That is just not for me. Others have set parameters for the various tools, similar to how I was managing Facebook and LinkedIn previously. Scott Monty, head of social media for Ford Motor Company, has done this on LinkedIn stating he will only accept connections who he has personally met. Given how LinkedIn works, this is a good idea. After all if you accept someone into your circle, they can network with your other connections. Spelling it out in your profile is a great idea. Scott has also established a Facebook profile and a public figure Facebook page for himself.

By no means do I have Scott’s following or have I achieved any sort of celebrity, but I think he’s on to something here.

So, I’m going to organize my social presence as follows:

• Facebook personal page: a place where I communicate with friends and family and share my non business life
• Facebook public figure page: a place where I share my business life, stories, failures, successes, and engage with people I connect with professionally. Family pictures and stories will be spared from this page
• LinkedIn: a place where I network with people that I have met and would be happy to make connections with and for

And then the dozens of other channels will remain open as they have been.

How do you manage your online profiles? Any tricks or tips you can share?

SxSW Day 2: “We all have #tigerblood”

Posted on 13. Mar, 2011 by Nicole Ravlin

Woah. What a FULL day. I got a late start and missed about 15-minutes of my first session, which was a real loss, but I caught up fast and then kept pace throughout the rest of the day squeezing in a few meetings along the way.

I am adding in transcripts of the twitter streams as many attendees are live-tweeting these events. I tend to bounce back and forth from taking notes on the iPad and tweeting and reading tweets during sessions. Somehow, I cobble all of this together – and it works for me. Here’s my notes and thoughts from the sessions that I attended, followed by links to each twitter transcript:

Brave New World: Debating Brands’ Role as Publishers
Let me first begin with the fact that I have a HUGE professional crush on NPR’s Tom Ashbrook (really, who doesn’t?) who moderated this panel. So, it started off well even though I sat on the floor (my penalty for being late).

• How will you get the attention of customers without telling compelling stories across your channels?
• One you connect with customers, how do you keep their attention?
• Marketers have a lot to learn if they want to become publishers.
• Earning customers trust… You can do this be becoming curators of content – not just pushing your message
• Nobody (brands) is asking why they need to use social media anymore… They know they have to do it, they just have to figure out how.
• You won’t be successful as a brand unless you are fighting for “mindshare” (Joe Pulizzi)
• Signal strength is an issue but active citizens can overcome that. A good example is BP – the brand had great strength, but the PEOPLE helped reveal the truth.

My apologies for not being able to attribute all of the points above – I just could not see who was saying what from the floor. Here’s the Twitter transcript for #curatedebate.

To Reply or Not to Reply? Facebook Conversations

I have attended a few Core Conversations in the past, and they either work really well or they bomb. This one surpassed my expectations. Lead conversationalist, Jeannette Arrowood did a good job sparking conversation, keeping the dialog going, and keeping people on track. I took fewer notes here, and the session seemed to fly by – but for what it’s worth, this is what I wrote down:

• Businesses big and small need to decide if they bring someone in or manage social media from inside. If it is the former, it has to be authentic. How do you achieve this?
• Monitoring tools vary depending on needs, here’s some that were mentioned: Hyper Alerts, Shoutlet, Ubervu, Social Mention, and Social News Desk (for news rooms).
• Facebook insights and admin capabilities have changed. Be sure you understand their full capabilities.

Here’s the Twitter transcript for #fbreplyornot.

I did attend the Keynote with Seth Priebatsch of SCVNGR and have a TON of notes, which will make for another stand-alone post. For now, you can see the Twitter transcript here.

Bloggers vs. Journalists: It’s a Psychological Thing
This was an interesting session. The presentation was very quote heavy, but that format did work to spark conversation during the Q&A section of the session. As much as I like Jay Rosen, I would have liked to have heard more from co-presenter Lisa Williams, who did not speak until the Q&A, and that was very limited. Here’s what I jotted down:

• There’s an old rule in sports journalism which is still handed down from older journalist to younger: No cheering in the press box.
• Bill Keller of the New York Times wrote “All the Aggregation That’s Fit to Aggregate” to appear on Sunday. According to Jay Rosen, Keller is incorrect in thinking that the New York Times does not aggregate—it does when it publishes a review of a movie, restaurant, play, etc.
• “Bloggers will not replace journalists” – Andrew Marr
• John Case of the Chicago Tribune writes, “Tribune writers use their own names and are accountable for what they write.” Julie DiCaro from Tribune owned Chicago Now site retorted, “Being derided by reporters at the Tribune for no apparent reason probably isn’t the best way to attract new bloggers to the Tribune’s network. And, if I’m being honest, grumbling about bloggers these days is tantamount to yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off your lawn. It makes you look really, really old.”
• From the Washington Post’s social media guidelines: “When using these networks, nothing we do must call into question the impartiality of our news judgment. We never abandon the guidelines that govern the separation of news from opinion, the importance of fact and objectivity, the appropriate use of language and tone, and other hallmarks of our brand of journalism.”
• “Kids are not going to see Google and the New York Times as separate industries,” said Lisa Williams. Geeks are helping to transform this.

Here’s the Twitter Transcript for #bvj

Welcome to the EGOsystem: How Much are You Worth?

When a session starts with the moderator saying, “Everyone at SxSW is running around with #tigarblood in them” – you just never know how it’s going to go. I was half expecting Charlie Sheen to make a cameo, but that did not happen.

I was really looking forward to this panel and was surprised that it was not more well attended, but that was most likely as it was the last session of the day and had to compete with the parties and happy hours starting. Brian Solis moderated the panel. If you know anything about Brian, you understand that he is an extremely intelligent guy who can articulate how and why people engage using social media. Brian was joined by Arnie Gullov-Singh and Sean Rad of Ad.ly, Joe Fernandez CEO of Klout, and filmmaker Jon Chu.

For me, the big takeaways for the intro from Brian were that you should know how you are being perceived online. Tools like Klout and PeerIndex (among others) can help you determine what this is. Why should you care? Well, increasingly brands are evaluating your scores and who you are and making decisions on how they treat and interact with you. And if you’re “big on Twitter” and you are able to mobilize your audience, this is of particular importance to many brands.

Thanks to Brian Solis for putting this session on.

I caught a little of the intros on video… here it is for your viewing pleasure:

Here’s the Twitter transcript of the session.

After all of this, I was able to meet up with the guys from Comcast who will be at the March #BTVSMB event on Social Customer Service. If you are in Vermont and planning on attending, get your tickets NOW… you won’t be disappointed.

From Austin… bring on day three.

Don’t Let Your Brand Go Dark

Posted on 23. Dec, 2010 by Nicole Ravlin

Heading out of the office for the holidays? Have you planned for your social channels to still have something happening?

You should have. Even though you are not working, your customers are still engaging online and with your brand. If you do not have a community manager watching the channels and engaging with your communities (which is the ideal), you may still want to have posts happening while you are out of the office. Here’s three simple things you can do to maintain in your absence:

1. Set up auto-tweets using socialoomph. Here, you set it and forget it. You can write/craft your tweet and then choose a date and time you want it to tweet out. It appears as if you are tweeting from the Twitter website. Socialoomph also lets you manage multiple twitter accounts from one dashboard. I have found it to be very reliable. It is free, though with the upgrade to professional, you have MUCH more functionality – including timing Facebook status updates.
2. Don’t forget about your blog! Most blogs have a “publish later” feature which allows you to set a date and time for a post to be published in the future. This is a great feature to use for those of us who have some blogs written and squirreled away (ha! – this is NOT me!!). If you are scrambling to think about what to post, consider posting a year in review listing the top five highlights or lessons learned in your business. And in preparation of the new year, maybe you want to share your hopes for your business or industry to be published on 1/1/11.
3. Post a “happy holidays” message on Facebook before you leave. You might want to consider letting your fans know that the team is taking some time off and will return. Perhaps you can ask what THEY are most looking forward to in the new year, or make a prediction about your business or product.

When you return to the office, you should do the following to catch up:

1. Respond to all posts on Facebook from fans.
2. Respond to those who tweeted at you/the brand while you were away.
3. Answer and/or respond to comments on your blog.
4. Visit socialmention and see who has been talking about your brand and/or products. Post accordingly.

Most of all, enjoy your time off!

I Voted

Posted on 03. Nov, 2010 by Nicole Ravlin

As you may have heard, yesterday was election day across the United States. It was a game changer in many ways. Of course between parties, but what was really interesting to watch was the way social media has evolved from last year to this year, and how people are using it for “events” like this.

If you logged onto Facebook yesterday, you may have noticed the “Facebook Election Day Message” at the top of your news feed. It prompted you to click the “I Voted” button once you had voted so that you could display a badge on your Facebook wall. We want to know what you thought about this and how it impacted your day. It only takes a few seconds to participate in our poll, which you can find here.

I’ll be writing a longer post on my take on the use of social media in the 2010 election later this week, and we’ll address the results of the poll as well.

Thanks for your participation!

We’re Going With Word of Mouth

Posted on 28. Oct, 2010 by Nicole Ravlin

I was out to dinner this week at a new restaurant in town with a couple of friends. We had a great time, enjoyed the atmosphere and food. The owner of the establishment came to the table and asked for feedback, which we gladly offered. The owner then went on to let us know that she would do “no advertising. At least that is not planned for the immediate future.”

The rest of the conversation went like this:

Me: Have you thought about using social media?

Restaurant Owner (RO): Um. Yeah, but we’re not going to do that. We’re going to rely on word of mouth.

Me: Oh. Do you have social media accounts built?

RO: No. Maybe sometime in the future but not now.

Me: You know, there are a few restaurant businesses in the area who opened within the past year and used social media to help build their business and increase the buzz around their openings.

RO: Yeah. We’re not going to do any advertising or social media at this time.

At this point the conversation ended.

No advertising. No social media. Basically, no marketing planned to help support the opening of the restaurant. Opening a restaurant is hard… being successful in the business is really hard. If you invest the money in a restaurant, why would you not take every opportunity to get butts in seats and feed the people?

I get that this business owner is trying to rely on people telling their friends, but in this day and age, these people are telling their friends in person, on the phone, via text and online through social sites. Why not tap into those? They are mostly free to use, except for your time.

My friends and I left and walked through the crisp evening air to our cars. We discussed how odd it was that there was no marketing – and more so, that the owner would not use Facebook at the very least to engage with the local public. We said our goodbyes and drove away.

Now 24-hours later I am still thinking about this interaction and am anxious to watch what happens to this little gem of a restaurant. I did tell at least five people about the food and recommended the restaurant. And I did not use social media to do so. I did, however, check in on Foursquare while there and tweeted a reply to a coworker about the food. So the “word of mouth” in the way that the restaurant owner wanted it to play out is happening. And, she is getting some benefit from social media – though she does not have to put in the effort to be part of the conversation. I just can’t help but wonder if the restaurant had their own presence on the mainstream social channels if they would have more customers.

It will be interesting to watch unfold.

If you are a restaurateur starting out and need some help in social media, I recommend checking out this site. You can also view this quick interview with Sarah Evans on “how to use social media in the restaurant biz”.

The Social Customer

Posted on 22. Sep, 2010 by Nicole Ravlin

I was forwarded an article from a colleague today that could not be timelier as I prepare to address the Vermont Grocers Association this weekend on “Using Social Media to Promote Your Store”.

You can read an article from the local newspaper, but basically, an employee of Price Chopper in Central New York took tweeting to a new level when an online conversation got out of hand. The Price Chopper employee contacted the customer’s employer. More details on the actual events can be viewed on Anthony Rotolo’s blog.

Clearly, the Price Chopper associate was in the wrong here. But, when working with the public, altercations with customers and employees happen… in person, on the phone and, now, online. How do companies put their best foot forward?

Here’s what a brands/retailers need to consider when including social media in their marketing mix:

• Review your social strategic plan (don’t have one? You should!!) with all associates who will be engaging in social channels on the companies behalf. Be sure that they are clear on it before handing over the keys.
• Establish protocol for response to any negative comments. I recommend that people bounce responses off of two other managers or associates before responding – this can keep emotions in check before anyone over reacts or reacts poorly on behalf of the company.
• Be clear with associates what behavior is ok and not ok when engaging online… this is no different from the training you do with front line employees who answer the phone or have face-to-face interactions with customers.
• Just because someone knows how to use a tool (“Sure, I use Facebook ALL the time!”), does not mean that they should be entrusted with being the voice of a company.
• Be transparent with the public after incidents occur.

For the average Joe or Jane, you might want to consider this before you engage in social channels:

• Whatever you publish online, even if you think it is “private”, it is public.
• Do not publish ANYTHING online if you would be embarrassed for your mom, grandmother, priest/minister/rabbi, or child read or saw it.
• If you are posting to social media channels on your own (not for work related purposes), do not post where you work. If you do post your employer, be sure to include a disclosure similar to: Opinions are my own… or the one suggested in Mr. Rotolo’s blog.

Now that this event has happened, I am sure that there are many retailers/grocers who are cringing and saying, “THIS is why our store will never Tweet or Facebook.” That is not the correct thinking, in my opinion. This is a really good example to use as you ramp your store up to use this marketing medium… a medium which is changing the way we look at ad spend, public relations and digital strategy for Fortune 500 companies and small, “mom and pop” businesses. Just be smart, and execute this tactic like you would any other campaign.

Photo Credit: Matt MacGillivray, CC Attribution